Extruding text for a label

I'm attempting to make a simple label by creating text curves and then extruding them a short distance. At first, I can get a few lines to extrude up as a unit, but eventually it junks out and different parts of the text curves fill in. For example, that triangle in an "A" and the center circle of an "O" are filled in, so I am having to spell each letter out of a word to get the extrude to work.

Why does this happen? Is there anything I can do to fix this? Irritating and time consuming. Thanks

Re: Extruding text for a label

A lot depends on the font used; I've had pretty good luck with the Arial family. In the text command use the "associative" and "join curves" option. When you start the extrude command, change the curve selection rule to "feature curves"; this will pick up all the text curves in a single pick (and the selection will update when the text changes).